To play along with these tirades briefly, here's The Ticket's earmark honor roll -- the Republican and Democratic senators who had no, nada, zippo earmarks among the billions secreted in the $410-billion spending measure: Democrats Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Republicans Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Jim DeMint of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona.
Further along, The Ticket shows the hypocrisy and lies Barack Obama told on the campaign trail:
Last year, McCain promised to wield his veto pen in the Oval Office against such spending and to make earmarkers famous. McCain's got no veto pen, but at least he voted no. Under the Republican's rhetorical pressure, Obama promised: "When I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending unwisely." He musta spent much of the night reading all those lines by lines.
Obama was so singularly proud of his action today that he signed it in private, so no photos or video to illustrate the hypocrisy. Which Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained by saying there was no public bill signing on the president's schedule. Think about that for a minute: It wasn't on the schedule because it wasn't on the schedule.
Obama's campaign freshness about creating a new Washington process is now a large part of his problem. He promised no lobbyists in his administration; he's got lobbyists in his administration. He promised no earmarks; after voting for none, he just approved more than 8,000 of them, including some inserted by his own chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.
McCain kept to his principles, did Obama?
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